"Whoa, this position! Mitsuhiko was this close to beating Yimi-chan!"
A group of elementary schoolers crowded around the corner of a wall, excitedly watching the final showdown.
"Don't distract me! Move back a little, you're blocking my view. This is when I need to focus..." Mitsuhiko tensely watched the card lying at an angle atop some trash, slapped down with both hands, and delivered the decisive strike.
"Did it work?"
Yimi's card flipped over, then, as the cheers turned into sighs, caught in a crack by the wall and flipped back again.
Mitsuhiko's own card then had the terrible luck of landing at an angle on the trash too, letting Yimi turn the tables on him immediately.
"That was so close!" Everyone else wailed on Mitsuhiko's behalf.
Yimi raised a fist and declared victory. "Won again. Small fry, small fry~"
"Stop insulting me..." Mitsuhiko blushed and took back his card.
This time Yimi genuinely had not cheated with superpowers. Her luck was simply absurdly good, so even when she played the card-slapping game normally, her opponent's card always seemed to land somewhere easy to flip.
Elementary schoolers in this world were not especially into slapping cards. Kamen Yaiba cards were normally collectibles among kids. Yet this invasive species known as a little cat had successfully spread the culture here.
Sure, it could damage the cards, but who could resist the thrill of winning somebody else's card?
"She's awfully popular. She keeps winning and people still challenge her." Ai swept the floor in silence, making no move to join the crowd.
Conan sat on the desk beside her, fiddling with his bowtie as he replied,
"I don't think that counts as popularity. From my experience, they're probably getting mad because a girl keeps mocking them, so they want to beat her badly and mock her back. The more they lose, the more they want to win. If she keeps taunting them this hard, someone might actually cry when they lose."
Though most of these little boys had probably just seen a pretty girl and wanted an excuse to play with her.
It was classroom cleaning time, which was exactly why the collective slacking off had become so lively.
Careless Genta had accidentally spilled water on Conan. The weather was hot today, so that part did not matter much. Conan was more worried that his bowtie might get wet and malfunction.
Ai took a few steps back, came up behind him, and looked at the bowtie.
"I see. So the voice of 'Sleeping Kogoro' that comes out on the news is actually transmitted through this thing. Then you must also use something like a poisoned needle to knock him out, right? Since you do that yourself, that explains why you claimed other people use poisoned needles too."
Conan gave her a dead-fish stare. "Hey, hey, hey. Why are you suddenly coming after me? The anesthetic needle the professor made is harmless."
"Voice?" Yimi, who had just been across the classroom, came over and grabbed Conan's bowtie.
She remembered Conan using this thing from behind Kogoro before, speaking in Kogoro's place.
Conan hurriedly snatched it back. "Give it back! Seriously, don't touch other people's stuff without asking."
"Before, you grabbed my phone." Yimi angrily pointed at him.
After Ai finished her phone call, Conan had taken Yimi's phone and turned it over repeatedly, looking for anywhere a needle might shoot out.
Shameless. She was never playing with him again.
...
She still played with Conan.
With Ran constantly dropping hints both openly and subtly, Kogoro had finally taken the initiative and brought them to an amusement park.
Yimi had been to an amusement park before. Shiori had taken her to one not long after she first learned how to turn human. This one, though, seemed very different.
"But why did we come to a small place like this Nichiuri Land?" Ran looked down at the flyer she'd kept talking about, then up at the area that could hardly be called bustling.
"What difference does it make? Isn't this place great too?" Kogoro discreetly hid something behind his back.
Conan pointed at him. "Uncle, what are you holding?"
"What thing?" Yimi circled behind Kogoro and snatched it away.
"Hey, you brat!" Kogoro raised a fist.
It landed on Conan's head.
Conan: "?"
Why am I the only one getting hit again?
Yimi happily scampered over and handed the newspaper to Ran, letting her see the boat-racing advertisement on it. It even listed each racer's chances of winning.
"Dad!"
Ran twisted the newspaper into a ball, but then seemed to think of something. The anger on her face eased slightly. "Fine. As long as you dare to try that, we'll reluctantly spend the whole day here."
She was pointing at the bungee jump.
"That... may require a little mental preparation."
"Then take your time preparing." Ran tried to take the two children by the hand and turn toward the stage show, only to discover that Yimi had already slipped away.
"Seriously. When did this kid pick up Conan's bad habits too?"
Conan: "..."
Yimi was both shocked and terrified, because she had seen Kamen Yaiba on the stage.
The superhero from television had become real! Junko had told her before that everything in there was fake and that she was not supposed to imitate it.
Kamen Yaiba himself did not matter much, but Diego could appear on television too. Yimi had never forgotten that useless Dora's older brother was also a Diego. This was something that demanded serious investigation.
Moving on her short legs, Yimi quietly ran to Kamen Yaiba's backstage room and politely knocked on the door.
There was a startled crash inside. A flustered man came out, and when he saw that the one knocking was a child, obvious anger appeared on his face.
Still, he managed to restrain himself. "This is a dressing room, kid. See these four characters? 'Staff Only.' If you disturb Kamen Yaiba while he's resting, he won't come out later."
"He won't come out?" Yimi nodded, ran a little farther away, and secretly watched the place.
Then she saw a Kamen Yaiba who had changed into costume come out, look around, hoist another Kamen Yaiba over his shoulder and throw him into the water, then turn and run toward the stage.
"Meow?"
Yimi ran over in shock, used telekinesis to haul the person out of the water, and pressed down on his belly the way cartoons did. (Regular kids, don't try this.)
"Pfft!"
A mouthful of water sprayed inside the helmet. The person coughed twice, and his breathing gradually steadied.
It was already strange enough for someone to come out of the television. Why were there two of them? Was this some kind of clone technique?
Consumed by curiosity, Yimi first carried the unconscious Kamen Yaiba back to the dressing room, then ran toward the stage. She arrived just in time to hear a group of children her own age scream.
...
Ten minutes later, Inspector Megure arrived after receiving the report.
"You're saying the person playing Kamen Yaiba performed a bungee jump, then the strap suddenly broke, he fell into the water, and disappeared?"
"Not only that. There were black scorch marks on the bungee strap. The damage was probably caused by an explosive charge. This is a murder case," Mouri Kogoro added.
"You say murder, but we haven't found a body at all." Inspector Megure looked troubled.
Right. Where was the body?
Among the crowd, Ootake Wataru—the man Yimi had seen earlier—did his best to hide his expression.
"Hey, where did you run off to just now?" Conan came over beside Yimi and asked quietly.
You didn't go do anything bad, did you?
"I went, to find Kamen Yaiba. But I found two." Influenced by him, Yimi also lowered her voice.
Two?
Conan froze for a moment, then immediately hid his eyes behind the reflection of his glasses.
So that was it.
"Can you tell me exactly what happened?"
"I went, around the back. Then I saw that person..."
Barring some surprise, the culprit's trick was simply exploiting the fact that nobody could tell which performer was inside the suit. He had impersonated the victim and publicly performed a fake accidental death. Unfortunately for him, the trick was crude. His ankle should still be injured right now.
"You know, who the culprit is?" Yimi asked Conan curiously.
"Yeah. It's the man you saw... Ahem. How would a little kid like me know?" Conan played dumb, then scuttled sideways past Yimi like a crab.
He got into position, aimed his anesthetic needle at Mouri Kogoro, and fired.
But to Yimi, who had been watching him the whole time, every movement was painfully obvious.
There he went again. That idiot had missed again.
The helpful little cat intercepted Conan's needle in midair with telekinesis.
Then she helped him send it straight into Ootake Wataru's neck.
"Uhh~ ah..." Ootake Wataru sank into a perfect brooding pose.
"What's wrong? Are you too tired?"
Inspector Megure jolted. "That familiar pose... Could it be?"
Conan: "?"
Th-this?
He had occasionally hit the wrong person before, but never anything this ridiculous.
"Meow?" Seeing Conan frozen in place, Yimi kindly ran over, crouched beside his hiding spot, and poked him. "What are you planning, to do next?"
Don't ask me. I don't know either!
Conan looked down at his watch. He only had one anesthetic needle.
Yimi lowered her head along with him and happened to notice Conan's high-tech bowtie. She suddenly remembered that after Conan hit Kogoro with the needle before, he used this thing to imitate Kogoro's voice and speak.
The kitty understood!
Yimi snatched Conan's bowtie.
"Wait, that..." Conan tried to stop her, but his combat stats were insufficient.
Yimi also happened to brush the dial on the back of the bowtie. Thanks to her luck, the voice landed on something quite close to Ootake Wataru's.
"I'm the killer."
"What?!" Everyone stared at Ootake Wataru in shock.
Yimi tried to remember again. After Conan said something like that before, he would start explaining the trick.
Kitty did not know the trick.
Depressed, she handed the bowtie back to Conan and left the rest to him.
Conan: "..."